Your name is in the mouth of others, be sure it has teeth: a Tale of Mice & Centaurs

[Mardoc]

That said, Volanna isn't quite as terrifying on a non-duel setting, where she's not the only one to benefit from a suppressed neighbor.

Archery has the added benefit of doubling the hammers from chops, so if I have a forested start this will be a very high priority tech.

Not quite. I believe it's +50% hammers - but artifacts of rounding on Quick speed mean that a chop is 8h pre-archery and 13h post-archery.

either early archers

Or?

[Ventessel]

Archery has the added benefit of doubling the hammers from chops, so if I have a forested start this will be a very high priority tech.

Not quite. I believe it's +50% hammers - but artifacts of rounding on Quick speed mean that a chop is 8h pre-archery and 13h post-archery.

Right, I was remembering incorrectly. Still good.

either early archers

Or?

I think that I was going to say "or hunters" and changed my mind after deciding that archers were better for defense against promoted scouts under any circumstances, even if they had the ant-ranged unit promotion (cover, I believe?)

[Ventessel]

Turn 0 Update:

This is the starting position, before I moved my units...


... and after.

I thought about where I wanted to go for a long time, since my city would eventually pick up a third set of tiles in each direction of the BFC. Despite grabbing three coast tiles to the north (blech.) and a desert tile to the east (I do have water mana from the palace, so not too bad) I chose to settle in place because moving south would lose me the gems E-NE, moving west would add questionable terrain such as tundra while costing me a farm on the corn, and moving NW onto the hill would add even more coastal tiles and lose me that sugar. So, after much deliberation... settle in place!
Here's my end of turn screen shot. I chose to research calendar initially so I could get into agrarianism and also build plantations on the sugar and reagents. After that, I'm planning on going straight to archery via mining (in part due to nervousness about Dave's opening move, which I'll get into in a second)


Here is the demo screenshot:


Immediately, I noticed that the rival best MFG was 8 and the population was 21000. Whaaat??? After thinking about it, and seeing Dreylin's score of 39, I realized that he must have popped his worldspell immediately to bump his city up to 3 pop and is now working some combination of tiles for 8h (maybe a forested hill in there, or he founded on a hill?)

Top Cities screen confirmed that suspicion:


I also know that so far all three players have founded their city T0 (no surprise there), I am tied for first in land area and the average is 4000. Now, if all three cities founded so far were inland, the average should be 5400. I believe (and bear with me, this is my first attempt at C&D shenanigans) that someone has founded a coastal city. Since rival best is 9k, I know there is one other inland city. But this is where I am confusing myself, because for a third city to exist and the average to be 4k, that city would need to be founded on a peninsula and pick up only 2 land tiles.

Now, disregarding how you would get there from your start position, you'd have to be on crack to found that city. So I assume I'm making some kind of miscalculation here (not surprising, really...)

Soldier count is easier to interpret. Myself and three other players have 5k, rival best is 6k. I believe that's the value of a single warrior? Since I started with a warrior and a scout, this could mean that either someone popped a warrior from a hut (unlikely given the map's balancing, I think) or it's due to starting tech giving more soldier points.

Does anyone out there have a handy link to where I can get information on how many points the various starting techs are worth?

And any commentary on my insane theory of someone founding a city that picks up 7 coastal tiles?

[Mardoc]

You need to wrap your picture links with screenshot tags (should be a button, or you can just type them as [screenshot [/screenshot (with closing brackets) if you want us to see them.

Now, if all three cities founded so far were inland, the average should be 5400

You are not your own rival. Try the math with two of four cities founded instead of three of five.

[Mardoc]

Does anyone out there have a handy link to where I can get information on how many points the various starting techs are worth?

All tech is worth the same, multiplied by era. Hover over your score for the various factors in score.

[Ichabod]

Wouldn't you get the gems tile in the third ring border pop by settling 1S? I think that tile gets added to a Kurio city.

If you press shift + tab in game you get to see the event log. When a WS is cast, it'll appear there. It's obvious that Dreylin popped his WS, but some of the others may not be so readily apparent.

[Ventessel]

Does anyone out there have a handy link to where I can get information on how many points the various starting techs are worth?

All tech is worth the same, multiplied by era. Hover over your score for the various factors in score.

I meant in terms of soldier points, probably wasn't clear from my initial question.

[Ventessel]

You need to wrap your picture links with screenshot tags (should be a button, or you can just type them as [screenshot [/screenshot (with closing brackets) if you want us to see them.

Now, if all three cities founded so far were inland, the average should be 5400

You are not your own rival. Try the math with two of four cities founded instead of three of five.

Ahhhh... that makes far more sense.

As for the screenshots, do I need some javascript extension enabled as well? Now it just says 'click to resize'. The images are formatted as JPEGs, would they be better suited as PNG files?

[Ventessel]

Wouldn't you get the gems tile in the third ring border pop by settling 1S? I think that tile gets added to a Kurio city.

If you press shift + tab in game you get to see the event log. When a WS is cast, it'll appear there. It's obvious that Dreylin popped his WS, but some of the others may not be so readily apparent.

That's what I'm not quite sure about. I think I'll tinker around in WB and see. As far as I knew, the workable tiles for a 3-ring city were a linear extension of the BFC, no corners added.

And I foolishly forgot to check the event log, not quite used to PBEM yet.

EDIT: Checked in-game, and yes those corner tiles are workable by a 3-ring city.

[Mardoc]

I don't think you're getting the right link from Dropbox. After I upload my pictures, I click the 'Copy Public Link' button, which gives me a link in this format:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16549110/example

While yours are:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a2u8ykp6mf52vw...ot0001.JPG

The pictures are public, I can see them if I go to the link directly, but I think you need the 'public link' for embedding.

Regarding Power: Look here